MFLY MFLY

Catch 22 is an anti-war novel written by Joseph Heller reflecting his time in the American military during World War 2. This book is widely regarded as one of the best anti-war books written because it goes into so much detail of what goes on inside the military base, you would think you were one of them. However, I believe this book overuses obscene language and has a lot of unsuitable parts, meaning this book should only be suitable for a mature audience. This book is set on an island of the coast of Italy where an American bombing squad was stationed. There were lots of different characters throughout the book, but it was all based around Yossarian. This novel sort of reflects the mindset of certain Colonels who are trying to impress their seniors during the war and how Yossarian, a captain and more junior stirs up his fellow soldiers to rebel. This is shocking because it shows all the infighting between this American bombing squad. The first main theme in this book portrays how Colonel Cathcart constantly raises the number of missions his men need to fly just to impress his seniors. This affects a lot of the soldiers, some become mentally unstable, some die, a lot were injured, and many were “court marshalled”. A court martial was when people are put on trial under military law. Most of the time soldiers were sentenced to unfairly because they did not obey unfair orders from their seniors. The second main theme in this book shows how soldiers were went through very bad mental injuries. Some of them committed suicide and some just simply went mad and could not fight the war properly. By the end of the book, the morale throughout the squadron was very low, on top of Yossarian trying to motivate his fellow soldiers to refuse to fight the war for the Americans. However, I do believe some of the events in the book was a bit stretched because most of the book focuses more on life outside of the war, rather than people actually fighting the war. In conclusion, I believe it is a fairly well written book for a mature audience that really truly brings you the perspective of life as an American soldier fighting in World War 2 because it is extremely uncensored and has all the unpleasant and immoral details packed into this 520 page novel.